Development of a new phenotypic roadmap to improve strawberry aroma based on direct injection mass spectrometry

The instrumental characterization of volatile organic compounds (VOCs) is essential to have a precise, reliable, and reproducible estimation of strawberry aroma and, therefore, of the overall product quality. The monitoring of VOCs produced by fruit needs analytical techniques that are capable of dealing with some challenging issues such as the measurement of complex gas mixtures and the need to track concentrations that rapidly change over time. This paper aims to report the main achievements on understanding strawberry aroma composition, obtained by different methodological approaches based on direct injection analysis. The high time resolution of proton transfer reaction-time of flight-mass spectrometry (PTR-ToF-MS) allows rapid, non-invasive and high throughput VOC fingerprinting that can be applied for quality studies both related to fruit genetic and transformation processes. This knowledge would enable for a more precise selection of the most favorable new accessions distinguished by superior fruit quality, suitable for different market segments.